Kolkata teenager death: Police arrest liquor shop owner, two others

Kolkata, July 27 (IANS) Four days after the mysterious death of a 17-year old boy during a birthday party, the city police made their first arrests by rounding up a liquor shop owner and two others on Wednesday for allegedly selling liquor to teenagers.

Police said the three were apprehended suo motu for violating a law that forbids sale of liquor to anyone below 21 years of age, and the matter was delinked from the murder case initiated into the death of Aabesh Dasgpta.

Dasgupta’s autopsy report has also failed to prove conclusively whether it was a murder or accident.

Police have also confiscated the mobiles of Dasgupta and more than a dozen of his friends and others who had attended the birthday party of author Amit Chaudhuri’s daughter in the basement of a south Kolkata apartment on July 23, where the incident is believed to have taken place.

The special investigation team (SIT) formed to probe Dasgupta’s death have questioned a number of teenagers present at the spot of the incident. Police have claimed that they have got some witnesses who have detailed the happenings.

The secretary and president of the housing association where the incident took place would also be questioned, police said.

Chaudhuri, who had visited the city police headquarters and apprised the investigators about the happenings that evening, on Wednesday claimed his daughter did not know Dasgupta.

“My daughter and indeed, most of that group did not know the boy who later died of an injury,” the author said in a statement.

A grievously injured Dasgupta, a Class 12 student, was found in a pool of blood in the ground floor car park of the apartment complex in Ballygunge and later declared dead at a hospital.

While police have registered a murder case based on a complaint by the Dasgupta family, the cause of the death is yet to be ascertained.

The investigators have also have found evidence suggesting Dasgupta consumed alcohol on the day of the incident.

Rejecting suggestions that her son died of wounds caused after falling accidentally on the broken bottle, his mother Rimjhim Dasgupta iterated he was murdered.

“It was not an accident. He was murdered and those present in the party know what actually happened that day. I think there are attempts to cover up the issue by giving it an accident angle,” she said.